


with embers in our hearts

by murdvck



Series: with a universe in our palms [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Civil War Team Iron Man, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tony Stark Has A Heart, continuity? in my marvel fic?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-08 13:16:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13459032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murdvck/pseuds/murdvck
Summary: "Tony leaned in and pulled Rhodey as close to him as possible, struggling to breath through the hiccuping tears and the weight in his chest."Sometimes, Tony drowns himself in his loneliness; sometimes, he doesn't.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There are no concrete displays of soulmates, no marks or fading colors or glowing skin, just a feeling that ignites your chest and screams with an unmistakable sense of familiarity. That screams that here, you're finally home.

He's drunk and slumped against a wall, beaten up and aching, when his first soulmate finds him, sending his heart into an unsteady, rapid rhythm, which may have stemmed from nerves, excitement, or the quickly fading thrill of getting the shit kicked out of him. 

“Holy shit,” the man hisses, his frame mercifully blocking the fluorescent lights that shine a little to sharply for Tony’s eyes.

He only has the presence of mind to wonder where his assailants had gone for a split second, the realisation that they had disappeared between one moment and the next dim and unobtrusive in the face of this new presence, this man whose eyes shone warm and worried behind nervous hands.

“Are you ok?” he asks, gently pulling Tony into a sitting position that doesn't leave his ribs aching and his head spinning quite so fast.

All he can manage is a nod and a feeble smile, with only half of its usual seamless faux mirth, followed by a croaked, “What's your name, jelly bean?”

A small laugh slips past the man's lips, warm and all-consuming in Tony’s whirling perception. “James Rhodes,” his hands are still hesitant, like he's never had a teenager slumped between him and a wall, staring at him with glassy eyes, “What's your name?”

“Tony Stark,” his response is immediate even though he wasn't sure whether James was asking out of genuine interest or fear of a concussion, he still finds a sliver of pleasure in the raised eyebrow of mild shock. “I think I'm going to call you Rhodey,” he adds, slightly seeking another reaction from him and slightly out of control from adrenaline and head trauma. 

Unsurprisingly, Tony doesn't remember much else from the encounter, just the shuffle of limbs and the feeling of being suspended, weightless, before he wakes up in his own bed, the only reminder he hadn't dreamed it all the insistent ache at his temples and the tension under his bruised skin.

He doesn't move for hours, the thought of food a small itch in the back of his mind as he tries to keep still, at least until he thinks he can stand without throwing up what little was left in his stomach. He finds a bottle of Advil and swallows two pills before drinking straight from the sink, head spinning as he leans over and the pressure behind his eyes nearly unbearable.

Once he's calmed down, once he feels a little more human and a little less like something untethered and incorporeal, he finds a phone number scribbled on his arm, too high up to be washed off when he washes his hands, but low enough to peek out from the sleeve of his ill-fitted long-sleeve. 

Underneath the chain of barely smudged blue numbers, the name Rhodey is scrawled in slanting script, enclosed in a set of quotation marks that leave Tony grinning a little too wide.

 

James Rhodes is his best friend within days. They're both two years into MIT, two kids a little too young for the great big world. Rhodey tells him he shouldn't drink, that it could wait ‘til he's legal. 

Tony just sticks his tongue out at him. 

He thinks it's the right thing to do. It makes Rhodey laugh and laugh until he's half resting his head on the table and half peering at Tony with those warm brown eyes. 

“You know that just makes you seem like more of a kid,” he tells Tony, smile bright and gentle and something more comforting than anything Tony’s ever seen. 

Tony just grins. “Just because you're eighteen doesn't make you my mom.” 

“God, I wish. If I was-" Rhodey cuts himself off with a waggle of his eyebrows and a sly smirk and Tony knows the guy is trying to get a rise from him but he can't help reacting.

“Ew, dude, what the fuck,” Tony cackles, shoving at Rhodey playfully, barely budging his taller, leaner frame. 

He lifts his hands innocently, brilliant smile still blazing, “Just kidding, Tones, just kidding.”

“You better be,” Tony huffs, trying to hide his amused smile in the circuitry he's elbow deep in. He isn't entirely sure it's working, not if he can judge it by the way Rhodey's soft grin, barely a few feet away, is warming Tony's skin like the summer sun.

It's comfortable, the silence that falls in the aftermath of the light exchange, broken only by Tony's tinkering and the light tap of Rhodey’s fingers against his phone. He thinks, distantly, that it's been a long time since he's been able to work with someone at his shoulder like Rhodey is. He thinks he can get used to it, if the way Rhodey grins when he catches Tony’s eye is ensured never to end.

He fades in and out of awareness, his hands working through the wiring of his robot on autopilot, muscle memory engaging as he equips sensors and servos and everything else the robot could need. He's three-quarters of the way done when Rhodey's hand settles on his shoulder, eyes looking tired and hiding a small yawn behind his hand.

“You should probably get some sleep, Tones,” Rhodey tells him, smiling when he drops his hand from his mouth. 

He's so close to being done, only a few more points to work on, specifically in the bulky claw that served as a head and hand, but Rhodey looks so sleepy and it doesn't help that Tony knows he can convince Rhodey to stay in his dorm, a comforting warmth next to him to cling to when he wakes up from a nightmare.

Long seconds stretch by before Tony sighs and abandons the project, flopping towards Rhodey dramatically.

“Only if you carry me there.”

 

“You know,” Tony drawls lazily, eye closed and phone pressed tight to his ear, “I could achieve world domination in less than 24 hours.”

He's exaggerating of course, the progress would last quite a bit longer, but he's really just trying to make a point, so it doesn't exactly matter. Rhodey only laughs louder and longer, the warm echoes of it crackling a little in the reciever.

“I'm sure you could,” he promises, voice just enough to soothe the unsettled beating of Tony’s heart.

He can't figure out why but everything feels a little wrong, a little off, as if it's been shifted two inches to the left and no one's let him in on the joke. Everything except Rhodey, who's half a world away but sounds so close through the speakers of Tony’s phone, who sounds like coming home.

The bed beneath him feels too big, too soft, and Tony wishes Rhodey were there to hit him with a pillow until he laughed and forgot. Silence stretches across the line, seconds turning to minutes until Tony can't breath around the real reason he'd called his best friend.

“They're ditching me for Christmas again,” and it's the same old sob story, the one Rhodey had been privy to for four years now, the one constant that had been in Tony's life since he was born.

A muffled sound spills from the receiver before Rhodey speaks, and Tony’s best bet is that his friend took a moment to throw something. “I can get time off to come over and stay with you?”

Tony definitely doesn't smile thinking of how well Rhodey knows him at this point, doesn't smile until he feels like sobbing when he notices that it's an intentionally light option, one Rhodey knows Tony can back out of if he gets flighty.

“If you're able to that would be fine,” and it would be, Tony wouldn't be drowning in his terrifyingly huge bed, wouldn't have to stare into the sight stealing expanse of white snow and only have the buzz of silence to emphasize it's emptiness. 

He wouldn't be alone.

He would have Rhodey, just as he always will.


	2. Chapter 2

Pepper’s arms are laden with a ridiculous amount of boxes, barely balanced with the two neatly wrapped gifts on the top of the stack. She's dressed comfortably, a loose t-shirt and an old pair of shorts that she can barely remember buying.

When she walks into the mansion’s living room, Rhodey and Tony are already there, a fire crackling away in the large hearth, the duo curled up on the couch nearest to it.

“Hey lovebirds,” she laughs, setting the boxes she's carrying onto the ornate coffee table and sitting on the couch beside Tony, shifting to lean on him and kicking off her shoes.

“I brought some gingerbread house kits, thought you two would be able to have fun with them.”

Tony immediately perks up a little, elbow digging a little too hard into Rhodey's ribs. “I've never actually made one,” he comments, pulling Pepper a little closer, “but I'm sure it'll be fun. We can open presents after.”

He's so warm next to Rhodey that he feels untouchable, yet despite being obviously excited about the gingerbread houses, Tony makes no move to get up, just stays curled between his two best friends and tries to settle the panic aching in his bones.

The way Pepper leans in, so close and so comforting, Tony wishes he had the same connection to her as he had to Rhodey. That somehow, he'd have a solid sign that she always be there. With Rhodey the knowledge that he wouldn't leave was innate, a sixth sense, but for everyone else it was an endless question of when, instead of if.

Before he could dwell further Rhodey shifted, pulling Tony up behind him by the hand. Pepper followed as they started opening the boxes of prebaked gingerbread, which felt as stiff as cardboard.

Rhodey's eyes met his as they frosted the edges of the large cookies, forgoing the directions to build whatever they wanted, a promise that he'd have to spill his feelings later.

He misses the same look from Pepper, shot at him over a small mountain of gumdrops.

 

 

 

His fingers press too tightly against the sharp edges of the battery he clutches to his stomach, just inches below the hole in his chest, shoulders drawn and sore, soaked and shivering.

He can't hear the foreign language passing back and forth above his head, only the dull ringing in his ears that hadn't faded since the bomb with his name on it went off right in front of him. The tremendous, earsplitting, boom still echoes in his ears when he closes his eyes, overwhelming and terrifying.

The water from his hair slips down the back of his neck and off his forehead, ice cold against his skin. All he wants is to be warm, to be back in the mansion with Rhodey, to stick his tongue out at Pepper when she tries to drag him to a meeting. It's really not a lot to wish for.

But honestly, he would settle for being back with Yinsen, where he could ask the older scientist to let him rest, and he could fall asleep with fingers carding through his hair that he would wish so desperately were Rhodey's.

A hand wraps tightly around his neck and forces his head back under the water.

Time fades into a warped, staggered passing, the only moments that feel real being the few desperate breaths of air he gets before he's back under water, and before he knows it he's back with Yinsen, exhausted and shaking, chest burning from the lack of oxygen. He doesn't know if it's been minutes or days since he's last seen the man’s face.

That night they start building.

It feels like it takes weeks upon weeks to create the arc reactor, and by the end Tony is shaking so hard he can barely breath. But the little electromagnet fits the hole over his heart like a glove, and glows as brightly as Rhodey had when he smiled at him before he left, just a little colder, a little bluer. Yinsen doesn't mention how Tony traces it's edges repetitively, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes whenever they’re alone. He just lays a hand on Tony’s shoulder in the stifling silence and stares at him with sad eyes.

Tony plans a way out of the cave for them with a renewed vigor, both him and his ideas fuelled ceaselessly by the reactor humming in his chest.

 

 

 

For an innumerable amount of hours, Tony thinks he's going to die wandering the desert. His skeleton will be found one day, bleached and gleaming, and no one will know who it once belonged to, his story buried in the ever shifting dunes of sand.

Then, the whirling of a helicopter’s blades strikes through the silence and Tony’s bones sing with relief, his bare arms shaking as he struggled to keep his jacket in a position to block the sun while waving for help.

Every movement pulls on his chest painfully, the arc reactor shifting underneath his tank top. He felels like crying with relief. His knees buckle and his lungs burn as the chopper got closer. Something in the back of his throat cracks, and his breath catches on a sob.

In a flurry of movement that Tony can't bring himself to focus on through his tears, the helicopter lands and someone comes sprinting out of it. He says something with a sad smile on his face as he approaches, welcoming and cracked at the end like he's holding back a sob, but Tony can't hear him through the ringing in his hears and the roar of the helicopters. He smiles anyways

It takes him too long to blink the haze of tears from his eyes but by the time he had the figure’s arms were already around Tony in a tight hug. But Tony didn't need to see to know who this was, because a warm hand was on his arm and another was on small of his back, and his best friend was kneeling in front of him, his face buried in Tony’s shoulder just as Tony’s face was buried in his.

Beneath the arc reactor, Tony felt like a weight was lifted from his chest and he could finally breathe. But it didn't stop him from sobbing harder into Rhodey’s shoulder.

Eventually he pulls away, holding Tony at arm's length and staring at him like he had when Tony was still a bruised teenager and he had had the dawning realization that this was the one person he never wanted to lose, and Tony did his best to ignore the abject terror that curled in his stomach when he saw the fear in Rhodey’s eyes and the tear tracks on his cheeks.

Tony leaned back in and pulled Rhodey as close to him as possible, struggling to breath through the hiccuping tears and the weight in his chest until he could manage to speak.

“I’m shutting it down, platypus. the weapons all of it,” and he can't speak anymore past the lump of tears that lodges itself back in his throat, sharp and aching.

Rhodey just hugs him tighter and lets out a shaky breath, nodding against his shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please let me know if you have any ideas of extra scenes for this fic! i have it semi planned but there's always space for extra ideas!!
> 
> and please let me know what you like about this (if you like it)!!!

**Author's Note:**

> [hmu on tumblr](starkdocx.tumblr.com)


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